Hong Ge et al.Download PDFPatent Trials and Appeals BoardDec 30, 201914031453 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Dec. 30, 2019) Copy Citation UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE United States Patent and Trademark Office Address: COMMISSIONER FOR PATENTS P.O. Box 1450 Alexandria, Virginia 22313-1450 www.uspto.gov APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO. 14/031,453 09/19/2013 Hong Ge 26295-24221 2015 87851 7590 12/30/2019 Facebook/Fenwick Silicon Valley Center 801 California Street Mountain View, CA 94041 EXAMINER WEBER, JOY M ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2173 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 12/30/2019 ELECTRONIC Please find below and/or attached an Office communication concerning this application or proceeding. The time period for reply, if any, is set in the attached communication. Notice of the Office communication was sent electronically on above-indicated "Notification Date" to the following e-mail address(es): fwfacebookpatents@fenwick.com ptoc@fenwick.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte HONG GE and LARS SEREN BACKSTROM Appeal 2019-000005 Application 14/031,453 Technology Center 2100 Before JAMES R. HUGHES, JENNIFER L. McKEOWN, and JASON M. REPKO, Administrative Patent Judges. HUGHES, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL STATEMENT OF THE CASE Pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 134(a), Appellant1 appeals from the Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1–20, which are all the claims pending in this application. See Final Act. 1–2.2 We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). 1 We use the word Appellant to refer to “applicant” as defined in 37 C.F.R. § 1.42(a). Appellant identifies the real party in interest as Facebook, Inc. See Appeal Br. 2. 2 We refer to Appellant’s Specification (“Spec.”), filed Sept. 19, 2013; Appeal Brief (“Appeal Br.”), filed Apr. 23, 2018; and Reply Brief (“Reply Br.”), filed Sept. 28, 2018. We also refer to the Examiner’s Final Office Action (“Final Act.”), mailed Aug. 25, 2017; and Answer (“Ans.”) mailed Aug. 10, 2018. Appeal 2019-000005 Application 14/031,453 2 We REVERSE. CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER The invention relates “generally to social networking systems, and in particular to providing content of a social networking system across multiple user devices.” Spec. ¶ 1; see Spec. ¶¶ 5–7; Abstract. Claims 1, 10, and 18 are independent. Claim 1, reproduced below, is illustrative of the claimed subject matter: 1. A computer-implemented method comprising: maintaining, by a social networking system, a view state for a user of the social networking system, the view state being a record of content items that identifies: a plurality of content items as having been sent to a user device, one or more of the plurality of content items as having been presented to the user, and an order in which the one or more of the plurality of content items were presented to the user; receiving, by the social networking system, a request for content items associated with the user; identifying, by the social networking system based on the view state, at least one content item as having not been presented to the user, the at least one content item of the plurality of content items identified by the view state as having been sent to the user device; identifying, by the social networking system based on the view state, additional content items as having changed state since presentation of the one or more of the plurality of content items to the user, the additional content items being from the one or more of the plurality of content items identified by the view state as having been presented to the user, and wherein identifying the additional content items as having changed state includes: Appeal 2019-000005 Application 14/031,453 3 receiving specified new interaction from at least one other user with respect to the additional content items; identifying, by the social networking system, a content item, from the at least one content item identified as having not been presented to the user, as having at least a threshold relevance to the user; ranking, by the social networking system based on relevance to the user, the additional content items and the content item identified as having not been presented to the user and as having at least the threshold relevance to the user; selecting, by the social networking system, one or more content items based at least in part on the ranking, the selected one or more content items forming a set of content items; and sending, from the social networking system, a newsfeed to the user device for presentation to the user, the newsfeed comprising the selected set of content items displayed above a subset of the one or more of the plurality of content items. Appeal Br. 24–25 (Claims App.). REFERENCES The prior art relied upon by the Examiner is: Name Reference Date Schacht et al. (“’249 Patent”) US 9,117,249 B2 Aug. 25, 2015 (filed Mar 15, 2012) Gross US 8,775,405 B2 July 8, 2014 (filed June 20, 2013) Schacht et al. (“’531 App.”)3 US 2015/0319201 A1 Nov. 5, 2015 (filed July 6, 2015) Spivack et al. (“Spivack”) US 2013/0298038 A1 Nov. 7, 2013 (filed Jan. 28, 2013) van Hoff US 2013/0097186 A1 Apr. 18, 2013 Darnell et al. (“Darnell”) US 2012/0042012 A1 Feb. 16, 2012 3 US Application No. 14/792,531 filed on July 6, 2015 claims benefit of US 13/421,786, filed on Mar. 15, 2012. The ’531 App. published Nov. 5, 2015 (US 2015/0319201 A1) and is now abandoned. Appeal 2019-000005 Application 14/031,453 4 REJECTIONS4, 5, 6 1. The Examiner provisionally rejects claims 1–20 under on the ground of nonstatutory obviousness-type double patenting over claims 1–3, 5–15, and 17–24 of the ’531 App. and Gross. See Final Act. 2–3. 2. The Examiner rejects claims 1–20 under on the ground of nonstatutory obviousness-type double patenting over claims 1–22 of the ’249 Patent and Gross. See Final Act. 3. 3. The Examiner rejects claims 1–5, 7–14, and 16–20 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over van Hoff, Darnell, and Spivack. See Final Act. 5–11. 4. The Examiner rejects claims 6 and 15 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over van Hoff, Darnell, Spivack, and Gross. See Final Act. 11–12. 4 The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (“AIA”), Pub. L. No. 112–29, 125 Stat. 284 (2011), amended 35 U.S.C. § 103, e.g., to rename 35 U.S.C. § 103’s subsections. Because the present application has an effective filing date (Sept. 19, 2013) after the AIA’s effective date for applications (March 16, 2013), this decision refers 35 U.S.C. § 103. 5 Appellant does not address either of the Examiner’s nonstatutory obviousness-type double patenting (“OTDP”) rejections (Rejections 1 and 2). Appellant, instead, requested that the Examiner hold these rejections in abeyance. See “Amendment C” dated May 19, 2017. Accordingly, we summarily affirm the uncontested OTDP rejections. 6 The Examiner withdrew the rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 101. See Ans. 3; Final Act. 3. Accordingly, we do not address Appellant’s arguments directed to the withdrawn rejection. See Appeal Br. 6–18. Appeal 2019-000005 Application 14/031,453 5 OPINION Obviousness Rejection of Claims 1–5, 7–14, and 16–20 The Examiner rejects independent claim 1 (as well as independent claims 10 and 18, and dependent claims 2–5, 7–9, 11–14, 16, 17, 19, and 20) over van Hoff, Darnell, and Spivack. See Final Act. 5–9; Ans. 3–7. Appellant contends van Hoff, Darnell, and Spivack do not teach the disputed limitations of claim 1. See Appeal Br. 18–22; Reply Br. 2–5. Specifically, Appellant contends, inter alia, that although van Hoff discloses status updates (as shown by the Examiner—see Final Act. 6–7; Ans. 4–5 (citing van Hoff ¶¶ 16–17, 26–28, 36)), van Hoff “does not teach or suggest . . . [the status updates] ‘having changed state since presentation of the . . . content items to the user’” and as “such, Hoff does not teach or suggest ‘identifying, by the social networking system based on the view state, additional content items as having changed state since presentation of the one or more of the plurality of content items to the user’” as recited in claim 1. Appeal Br. 20 (quoting claim 1); see Appeal Br. 19–20; Reply Br. 2–3. Appellant additionally contends that although Hoff’s crawler identifies “status updates” or “latest updates,” the identification “is not performed based on a view state for a content item.” Reply Br. 2. Further, Appellant contends theses updates constitute “[n]ew items” of content that were not previously presented to the user as required by the claim—“[n]ew items available in a source are not content items having changed state since presentation to a user.” Reply Br. 2. Appellant also contends that even if the updates are “identified as content items having changed state since presentation to a user,” “a person of ordinary skill in the art would not have understood this portion of Hoff,” i.e., the updates (content items), “as disclosing the Appeal 2019-000005 Application 14/031,453 6 identification of the ‘additional content items’ without a substantial amount of hindsight,” i.e., the updates are not additional content. Reply Br 2–3. Appellant further contends that “neither Hoff, Darnell, nor Spivack teach or suggest ‘receiving specified new interaction from at least one other user with respect to the additional content items’” as recited in claim 1 (Appeal Br. 21 (quoting claim 1)) and Spivack “instead only teaches that interactions with content items may be used as a factor in analyzing trends, topics, and behaviors of users” (Appeal Br. 21), which is not a new interaction. See Appeal Br. 21; Reply Br. 3–4. We agree with Appellant that the Examiner-cited portions of van Hoff and Spivack (in combination with Darnell) do not describe “identifying . . . based on the view state, additional content items as having changed state since presentation of the one or more of the plurality of content items to the user” and such identifying (of the additional content items as having changed state) further including “receiving specified new interaction from at least one other user with respect to the additional content items” as recited in claim 1 (Appeal Br. 24–25 (Claims App.)). See Appeal Br. 18–22; Reply Br. 2–5. The Examiner-cited portions of van Hoff describe status updates, but do not explicitly describe the content previously being presented to a user and a portion (subset) of the previously presented content being identified as having changed state (being updated) since the presentation. Nor does van Hoff in combination with Spivack describe a new interaction related to the additional content. At best the Examiner-cited portions of van Hoff describe identifying content that has been updated by other social media users (status updates), which is not additional content extracted from content previously presented to a user. The Examiner does not sufficiently Appeal 2019-000005 Application 14/031,453 7 explain how the cited portions of van Hoff at least suggest the disputed features. Consequently, we are constrained by the record before us to find that the Examiner erred in finding that the combination of van Hoff, Darnell, and Spivack obvious Appellant’s claim 1. Independent claims 10 and 18 include limitations of commensurate scope. Claims 2–5, 7–9, 11–14, 16, 17, 19, and 20 depend on and stand with claims 1, 10, and 18, respectively. Obviousness Rejections of Claims 6 and 15 The Examiner rejects claims 6 and 15, which depend from claims 1 and 10 (respectively), as obvious in view of van Hoff, Darnell, Spivack, and Gross. See Final Act. 11–12. The Examiner does not suggest, and we do not find, that the additional cited reference (Gross) cures the deficiencies of van Hoff and Spivack (in combination with Darnell) (supra). Therefore, we do not sustain the Examiner’s obviousness rejections of dependent claims 6 and 15 for the same reasons set forth for their respective base claims (supra). CONCLUSION For the reasons discussed above, we determine that claims 1–20 are unpatentable on the grounds of nonstatutory obviousness-type double patenting. For the reasons discussed above, we also determine that claims 1–20 are not obvious in view of the cited prior art. Appellant has shown that the Examiner erred in rejecting claims 1–20 under 35 U.S.C. § 103. We therefore affirm the Examiner’s rejection of claims 1–20 because we sustained at least one ground of the Examiner’s rejection. Appeal 2019-000005 Application 14/031,453 8 DECISION SUMMARY In summary: Claims Rejected 35 U.S.C. § Reference(s)/Basis Affirmed Reversed 1–20 nonstatutory obviousness-type double patenting ’531 App., Gross 1–20 1–20 nonstatutory obviousness-type double patenting ’249 Patent, Gross 1–20 1–20 103 Hoff, Darnell, Spivack 1-20 6, 15 103 Hoff, Darnell, Spivack, Gross 6, 15 Overall Outcome 1–20 REVERSED Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation